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21st December 2014

Views, Reviews & Forum

How to be a smart city
(technology not included)

People's
actions matter more in making city a better place to live in

Source: Straits Times / Think

So what's a
smart city?

According to
one definition, it's one that uses digital technologies to enhance performance
and wellbeing, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more
effectively and actively with its citizens.

If that
sounds vaguely familiar, you're probably thinking you heard it before, when it
was known as the intelligent, and then, the connected city.

It's now
morphed into "smart city", because advances in digital and
telecommunication technologies have brought the idea closer to reality.

In areas
such as transport, energy, education, health care and waste management, the
ability to connect people and machines and figure out, using powerful
computers, the most efficient way of doing the work is now possible.

Imagine
knowing exactly where every bus or taxi is on the roads and matching them to
commuters, or monitoring the health of elderly people at home.

But just as
having a smartphone doesn't make you a smart person, a digitally smart city
isn't necessarily one that's doing all the right things by its citizens and
making their lives more pleasant.

In fact, a
smart city with all the computers at its disposal can be doing many dumb
things, and doing them even more quickly.

A really
smart city (as opposed to being just digitally smart), on the other hand, knows
what the right things to do are, with or without technology.

So what's a
really smart city?

I don't have
a definition - it's one of those things where you know it when you see it.

Fortunately,
there are many such places in the world, and what they do is worth emulating.
Here are my three favourite examples.

Singing
garbage trucks

Before Mr Ma
Ying-jeou became mayor of Taipei in 1998, garbage collection in the city was
like in many other places, including Singapore. People would leave their trash
in bins outside their homes and the garbage truck would come every day to
collect it.

The problems
this created are also familiar - the amount of rubbish kept growing every year,
sometimes spilling into the roads from bags left overnight and scavenged by
stray cats and rodents.

Mr Ma
proposed a radical solution.

Henceforth,
all rubbish had to be placed only in bags sold by the authorities, with garbage
fees worked into the cost of each bag. That means the more you dispose of, the
more you pay.

Even more
unprecedented - the bags had to be brought down only when the trucks arrived in
the evening and thrown into the vehicles by residents themselves.

Almost
everyone was up in arms at his proposal; critics said it would not work and
that rubbish would pile up in the city.

In fact, it
worked like a charm. The amount of waste collected fell considerably over the
years and the arrival of the garbage trucks, to the accompaniment of music, is
a nightly ritual now a part of Taipei life.

Contrast
this with Singapore, which has made it so convenient for people to simply toss
rubbish down Housing Board chutes, often without even bagging it.

It tends to
encourage lazy and wasteful behaviour, resulting in ever increasing amounts of
household trash that require more land and incinerator plants.

The
colour of rubbish

In Germany,
most homes come with four bins, all differently coloured according to what they
are meant to collect.

Blue is for
paper and cardboard, yellow for packaging materials like plastic, cellophane or
metal, brown for food waste and black for assorted rubbish that doesn't fit in
any of the others. Bottles have to be disposed of in bottle banks, garden waste
in specially set-up compost bins.

These and
other measures have made Germany the leading European country for recycling
household waste.

That's
smart, because it leads to more efficient disposal of rubbish, saving valuable
land and energy.

In
Singapore, there isn't much recycling of household waste, and even food waste
isn't separated from other trash. This raises the cost of waste disposal, as
food contains moisture which needs more energy to incinerate.

If you've
ever visited the Tuas incineration plant and smelled the stench from decaying
food mixed with other trash, you'll know what I mean.

Two
wheels good, four wheels bad

Almost
everyone cycles in the Netherlands, Denmark and many other European countries,
not for recreation but to commute to work.

Cities are
planned around this; there are special bicycle lanes, and cyclists have right
of way over other vehicles.

On a recent
trip to Amsterdam, I found that I was the only (not so smart) pedestrian on
some roads. Everyone else was on a bike.

But it's too
hot to cycle in Singapore?

Where I
live, in Serangoon Gardens, there is a French school nearby.

Every
morning, scores of its students cycle past my house, often with parents riding
behind the younger ones.

You never
see this with Singaporean parents or students.

Yet, if you
think about it, it's such a smart way to travel - cheaper than driving a car,
you get a lot more exercise, and it's so much kinder to the environment.

Who's the
smarter one - the Dutch cyclist or the Singaporean with his $100,000 car bought
with a five-year loan?

I could give
many more examples from other cities, but they all have one thing in common.
Really smart solutions involve people doing things that collectively make their
city a better place.

It's never
the technology, but almost always people's actions and motivations that matter
more.

Experts
see shift of power back to the US and voice concern about financial contagion
from Russia

Source: Straits Times / News

THE crashing
oil price is not just another cyclical downturn but a stark sign that the
global economy is facing an unprecedented structural shift, financial experts
said.

The profound
changes under way will benefit some nations but bring problems to others.

Singapore
and the United States are largely expected to be among the winners while the
biggest losers will be countries such as Russia and Venezuela that depend
heavily on selling oil.

Net oil
exporters such as Malaysia may suffer in the short term, they said at a
roundtable discussion held by The Sunday Times last week.

Game-changer

"There
are reasons out there to think that this could be more of a structural rather
than cyclical story," Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Chua Hak Bin
said.

"The United
States is now structurally emerging as a net energy exporter," he noted,
adding that new drilling technology has made it cheaper for smaller oil
producers to enter the market.

Smaller
producers can respond more nimbly to changes in market demand and the industry
has become "closer to a perfect market", he said.

The oil bust
could not have come just from a decision by the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (Opec) to maintain its oil output, since Opec controls only
a third of global production, he said, adding: "I would question whether
oil is the new coal... When you look back at history, when commodity prices
have plunged so much, they have not rebounded."

Crude prices
have nearly halved over the past six months: Brent crude sank below the US$60 a
barrel mark last week before rallying to around US$60.40.

"We
have a lot of managers based in the United States; we are rather surprised that
this message has not reached the rest of the world yet. They see it as a new
renaissance in terms of the US having a very strong competitive edge in lower
manufacturing costs."

Many firms
that outsourced operations were moving manufacturing back into the US, which
would create more jobs, boost consumer confidence and stimulate the economy,
said Mr Lim.

Mr Howie
Lee, investment analyst at Phillip Futures, said this shift of power back to
the US would be a game-changer for the global economy and geopolitics as the US
would no longer be "at the mercy of another country".

Singapore
set to benefit

Singapore is
also expected to be a net beneficiary as it is a net oil importer, so falling
prices bring immediate savings.

Singapore
exports refined petroleum products, which are premium goods compared with the
raw materials, Mr Lee noted, adding: "So in the short run we are getting
crude oil at a lower price while our premium product prices tend to be
stickier, so we are seeing our profit margins widening."

Refiners
here will have hedged against oil price crashes, so they "should not see
profit margins get squeezed that badly", he said.

However, Dr
Chua added that since the amount that people here spend on petrol is much less
than car taxes, the net positive effect on consumer spending is likely to be
small.

Marine and
offshore firms involved in oil production may also be hurt, the experts said.

Mixed
bag for neighbours

Most other
countries in the region are also widely expected to benefit from the oil price
crash since they are also net importers.

The major
exception is Singapore's biggest trading partner, Malaysia, which is still a
net exporter even though it has gradually been moving towards becoming a net
importer of oil. Oil-related revenues account for about 30 per cent of its
fiscal intake.

"There
will be all these tremors," Dr Chua noted. He said the oil crash could
mean that the Malaysian government could fall short of its fiscal targets next
year and there are concerns that the country will have to cut back on
expenditure, which could lead to bad debts for Malaysian banks.

Mr Lee told
The Sunday Times that the other South-east Asian country that will be hit is
Brunei, where oil exports make up a huge chunk of state revenue. However, he
said the Brunei government ought to have enough reserves to help tide it over.

The experts
were more worried about countries heavily dependent on oil exports, such as
Russia and Venezuela, and the financial contagion arising from their possible
collapse.

Russian
contagion

DMG research
head Terence Wong said financial contagion arising from Russia is one of the
biggest risks to the world economy next year: "I'm most worried about
Russia. I'm not sure how far they can last till they start to default on their
debts. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is putting on a brave front."

He said he
was hoping that the Opec cartel would decide to shrink output in the middle of
next year, which could help prices recover.

While many
Singapore companies have exposure to Russia, the knock-on effects from a
Russian collapse would generally affect Singapore as it is a small and open
economy, the experts said.

Capital
Economics said in a report last week that the damage done to net oil producers
by the oil bust was expected to be "10 times larger than the boost to net
consumers".

"The
losers may be hit so hard that the fallout from their problems offsets the more
diffuse benefits to the winners, even if the latter group is much larger,"
it added.

"We
still believe the contagion risks to be small, provided oil prices don't fall
much further, but will continue to assess the wider implications of the crisis
in Russia particularly closely."